


Awake

by tekowrites



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Dreams, Horror, M/M, Nightmares, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 22:22:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tekowrites/pseuds/tekowrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy's having a nightmare, or is he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awake

**Author's Note:**

> Written for YA, Billy and Teddy after the latest issue. Contains spoilers, contains mention of a helpless Billy being tortured.
> 
>  
> 
> No Beta, obviously. *sighs*

_There is nothing more delicate in the world, than a dream shell. It is so preciously fragile in constitution, so very very thin, that to shatter it you only need a breeze._

_But a nightmare is a stranger, your deepest, darkest fear in  possession of you in a moment of complete helplessness, that to break free from them, one must scream._

 

“B. B wake up.”

Billy tries to rub his eyes,  the sudden light spilling into them, making him blink rapidly.

His hands won’t move.

Billy tries again, eyes still straining to open, he pulls his hands towards his face, and stills when pain blooms around his wrists.

“Teddy, my hands..what’s wrong with my hands?”

There’s no reply, and that silence, more than anything, sets Billy’s alarm bells ringing.

“Teddy?” The panic in his voice is echoed in the small space surrounded by shadows, and Billy ponders the possibility of danger the minute he doesn’t recognize his surroundings.

“Shut up!”

His eyes adjust slowly, getting snatches of visuals between tears of strain. His sight is impaired, but not his hearing, and he recognizes that voice to be Teddy’s.

“Teddy this is not funny. Please free my hands.”

“So you can ruin us all?”

His _what_ dies in his throat, Billy wants to ask what all of this means, but he knows.

Oh God how can he not know.

“T, I’m so sorry. I wish I hadn’t. I want to fix it all so bad. I just don’t know how. Please believe me.”

Teddy doesn’t reply, prowling around in the shadows, casting images of his own around. Billy hears rustling, feels someone climb the bed and relaxes a fragment.

When the piece of fabric is pushed down his mouth, he struggles and kicks his legs in the air with little use. He tries to throw Teddy off, but realizes that it wasn’t just his wrists Teddy had bind to the bed.

Billy tries to chant himself free, but all he hears are his own desperate muffles. He’s horrified to his core, his one security blanket pulled right from under him. Fear like he’d never experienced before grabs him. It’s like nothing he’d been through, the thought that Teddy had turned against him.

He pleads through the gag, begging for a chance to explain, to understand what’s going on, but his pleas fall onto deaf ears.

“How dare you. How dare you try to take your life.”

Billy gasps, shocked to know Teddy found out, or even knew about his moment of pure madness. His crippling fear is almost paralyzed at the thought that this was all it was about. Teddy making him take responsibility for almost causing them all more grief. But the next words he hears chill him to the bone.

“You made me, sculpted me this way to prevent this very thing.”

Teddy moved out of the shadow to the sole source of light in the room the light bulb swaying in the room, and Billy whimpered at what he saw.

There was maniacal smile on Teddy’s face, and glazed, emotionless eyes stared right at him.

His entire body hair froze on end, skin trying to crawl off of him entirely.

That couldn’t be Teddy.

A deep chuckle sounded from above him, it was a mirthless empty sound that set his teeth on edge.

Teddy trailed one finger down his right cheek, pressing it hard against his flesh and digging the fingernail in at the end.

Billy’s sharp cry forced itself from between his gag, as a slow trickle of blood slid down his face.

“I’ll fix everything Billy. You and I will be that perfect image again.”

He tried to scream again, to get a flow of magic to save him, but only managed to get Teddy’s fingers to press down all of his face back into the pillow he was resting on.

“First things first love, that silver tongue of yours _has to go_. The only magic we'll have, is our perfect ending.”

Billy shook his head, tried to get away from the endless pain the voice was promising, his magic gone, his entire identity. The fingers tightened around his face, crushing his small skull as the chuckle sounded, and the figure got closer.

Billy screamed.

***

When Billy blinked his eyes open this time, it was to complete darkness. He panicked and tried his voice. “Teddy?”

Relief rushed through his body, as his voice worked, and he couldn’t sense the pain of that wound on his cheek.

It had been a dream. No, a complete utter nightmare if he’d ever had one. He breathed in and out, slowly getting his erratic heartbeat to slow down, and finally settle on a normal beat. His sweat began to cool around him, and Billy shivered. He made to lift the covers up when his hands resisted his pull.

The same sickening chuckle sounded above him, ratcheting his heartbeat into a frenzy of beats. The light came on, brighter than before, and the shadows moved, danced around and mimicked the smiling face of Teddy’s in their twirl around his head.

“Where were we? Ah, yes. A perfect end.”

Billy screamed this time, louder, using a force he didn’t have the capacity of thought to even analyze. As the raw sound tore out of him, he began to cough blood.

***

“Billy? Billy for fuck’s sake wake up!”

Billy thrashed wildly on his bed, his scream an endless sound the kept pouring out of him. He pulled his hands and pounded around him, landing blows on Teddy’s body next to his. His legs kept kicking at everything, trying to untangle out of the trap of sheets they were locked in.

Teddy grabbed his arms and used his strength to still their motion.

“BILLY. BILLY WAKE UP NOW!”

Billy’s eyes snapped open, staring without focus on Teddy’s, his body thrumming with energy and still trying to escape the cocoon of Teddy’s hold on him.

“It was a nightmare. Wake up. Focus on me.”

Billy shook his head, mouth now clenched so tight his lips were turning white under the slight light in the room.

“You can do this. Breath baby. With me now. Take a deep breath.”

Teddy took a lungful of air, counted seconds, and then exhaled it slowly. He repeated the motion, stopped when Billy started, and re-did the breathing exercise with him. He slowly loosened his grip on Billy’s arms until it was more of a caress, he then began to massage the pain away.

Billy sobbed, turning his head to Teddy’s chest and cried his fear there. Teddy massaged his hunched back, easing his panic as his body shook with the rattling sobs.

He wasn’t sure how long it took, but Billy came to when Teddy was still lazily rubbing a hand up and down his back, their faces much closer, and Billy’s breathing much calmer.

He kept his eyes closed, clinging to the safety offered to him, and kept his breathing even.

Teddy placed his lips on Billy’s forehead, he mouthed “I’ll fix everything,” and smiled.

_"I’ll fix everything Billy.”_

 

Billy froze.


End file.
